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theodp writes "The WSJ reports that a coalition of Internet giants including Google has agreed to support a do-not-track button to be embedded in most Web browsers — a move that the industry had been resisting for more than a year. The new do-not-track button isn't going to stop all Web tracking. The companies have agreed to stop using the data about people's Web browsing habits to customize ads, and have agreed not to use the data for employment, credit, health-care or insurance purposes. But the data can still be used for some purposes such as 'market research' and 'product development' and can still be obtained by law enforcement officers. Meanwhile, after Google got caught last week bypassing privacy settings on Safari, and was accused of also circumventing IE's P3P Privacy Protection feature, CBS MoneyWatch contacted Mozilla to see if it had noticed Google bypassing Firefox's privacy controls. After reports that Google ponied up close to a billion dollars to Mozilla to beat out a Microsoft bid, this seems to be one of those have-you-stopped-beating-your-wife type questions that has no good answer. Anyway, according to a statement attributed to Alex Fowler, global privacy and public policy lead for Mozilla: 'Our testing did not reveal any instances of Google bypassing user privacy settings.'"

The Microsoft accusation was a PR farce that backfired on them big time. And the Safari accusation turned out to be a bug in Safari and was used by several companies including Facebook. How about editors doing their actual work and checking the submission for obvious bias?

"All go to hell except cave 76! Rah!". Frankly this corporate cheerleading is getting a little old and one begins to wonder if there isn't something to the rumor that Google pays posters to hang around at geek sites to protect their branding. Lets break this down, shall we?

The way to understand a thing is to know its function I've always said, so lets look at Google, what is its function? Where does their revenue come from? Well according to their filing with the SEC more than 96% of their revenue last year

Frankly this corporate cheerleading is getting a little old and one begins to wonder if there isn't something to the rumor that Google pays posters to hang around at geek sites to protect their branding.

So which company is it that pays you to do it then? Should we look for evidence of you being a shill, if we're being so suspicious of people?

Google "Does no evil"

People who claim that Google's motto is "do no evil" instead of "don't be evil" in the face of basically anyone who pays any attention correcting them continuously is either being willfully ignorant or is being paid to be willfully ignorant. Shills prefer "do no evil" because it's an impossible standard: Nobody agrees what evil is. If they work with copyright holders then they're evil MAFIAA censors, if they refuse then they're evil pirate sympathizers wrecking the economy, if they look for middle ground then they're both.

Now let's consider the disregard for facts (typical of shills):

if they weren't they wouldn't have become a fortune 50 company

Apple and Microsoft are in the Fortune 50. Google is number 92 (on the 2011 list).

That's just this post. Do you want to see if anyone is interested in looking through your history for more evidence that someone is paying you to attack Google (like repeated postings of the same talking points), or are you finished trolling?

On Firefox, the "Tell websites I do not want to be tracked" is not enabled by default. I don't understand why this is not the default action.

The option should be "Tell websites I'm okay with being tracked" and should be ticked off by default.

I know when the feature was announced and then released, it was talked about for a few days and then went by the wayside. This was primarily due to the fact that Google, et al, had NO obligation to actually abide by this setting.

With the White House (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46495868/ns/technology_and_science-security/) announcing a new privacy plan, it will be interesting to see if the companies decide to self-regulate or if it will take the force of law to make them regulate.

Ok, read that in another/. story (and, very recently, in TFS) but - maybe I'm a bit naive - I thought Mozilla spirit and all would be over that... (oh I just hear people writing replies to this - calm down!)

Because they and other advertisers must honor the DNT flag in order for it to work. Since they don't have a natural incentive to do so, the question becomes: how much media attention, public pressure, and legislative action can you muster to force them? Answer: enough to get them to agree to an opt-out approach, but nowhere near enough to get them to agree to an opt-in approach... the latter would have them fighting tooth-and-nail because you'd basically be cutting off a major revenue stream and threatenin

I block Analytics and Doubleclick at the network firewall. Ghostery and NoScript (or ScriptNo in chrome) are the way to go. You can't trust advertisers to do the right thing, ever. Just as you can't trust the word of a marketer.

I doubt FF or chrome will be opt-in as long as google is holding the purse strings for both (or directly developing as in chrome). Google is the world's number one internet advertising provider... they aren't going to automatically opt-out people and cost themselves millions of dollars.

On Firefox, the "Tell websites I do not want to be tracked" is not enabled by default. I don't understand why this is not the default action.

The whole point of Do Not Track is that it indicates a specific conscious request by the user not to be tracked. Anyone ignoring it is explicitly deciding not to respect the user's wishes and can't claim otherwise. Having it enabled by default allows it to be handwaved away as some arcane browser setting that "real users" don't know or care about.

"As Do Not Track picks up steam and standardization is well underway in the W3C, people have begun asking, âoeIf Do Not Track is so good for the web, why donâ(TM)t you turn it on by default?â

Frankly, it becomes meaningless if we enable it by default for all our users. Do Not Track is intended to express an individualâ(TM)s choice, or preference, to not be tracked. Itâ(TM)s important that the signal represents a choice made by the person behind the keyboard and not the software maker, because ultimately itâ(TM)s not Firefox being tracked, itâ(TM)s the user.

Mozillaâ(TM)s mission is to give users this choice and control over their browsing experience. We wonâ(TM)t turn on Do Not Track by default because then it would be Mozilla making the choice, not the individual. Since this is a choice for the user to make, we cannot send the signal automatically but will empower them with the tools they need to do it.

Do Not Track is not Mozillaâ(TM)s position on tracking, itâ(TM)s the individualâ(TM)s â" and thatâ(TM)s what makes it great! For that reason we have no plans to turn on Do Not Track by default."

Hint: they have a choice. Try using adblock on numerous sites that do not want you to use it and take measures against it for a great example of what they can do.

For example, one of the tabloids in my country blocks all videos on its homepage if I block tracking with ghostery. Don't want to be tracked? No videos for you. Just a nice black screen with a message "cannot show content because of your ad blocking".

i know quite a few sites, which detect my adblocker and display some annoying notice. i just adblocked the notice as well (adblock element hiding helper ftw).

And if they really do not display the video, there will soon be some userscript or something, which fakes the ad-loading and does not display the loaded ads. When the site is big enough, there will always be countermeasures, if its not big enough, they cannot risk losing users. So its still a rabbit and hedgehog problem.

There are quite a few of them out there. You'd have to build a tailored script bypass solution for each site, and every time, site would only need to slightly modify their script to again fully block you. This was shown in skipscreen fiasco - it's almost impossible to keep on bypassing someone who doesn't want to be bypassed. Sites

But they will always lose. There are a few persons programming the blocking, and many who want to bypass it. Just think of antivirus. No antivirus-program has a "complete" list of viruses, the newest one is always unknown. So the antivirus-programs are always trying to catch up to the newest virus, while the newest virus is getting old and newer ones are already spreading.

And just like that, the updated blocker-signatures will be more up2date than the updated blockers.

Except that they WON. In past tense. Skipscreen is dead, mostly because author lost motivation to constantly update the addon. Adblock still kills most of the sites that choose to block it vast majority of the time. Ghostery still gets you blocked on some video sites. Etc.

The claim that "we will win in the end" fails to note that even if you win in hypothetical ending, it's a moot point because "ending" doesn't actually exist. It's a permanently ongoing process, and during this process, you are the losing s

That would be because major sites do not care enough to block you. They get enough revenue anyway.

Of the minor sites, quite a few actively block adblock browsers, ranging from disabling certain key page elements to blocking videos on streaming sites, to blocking entire pages. At least one major tabloid site in my country actively blocks streaming video content for those who block ad tracking with ghostery. I know of at least one swedish gaming site that blocked the entire page delivery until I whitelisted i

1) i'm seeing some finnish message instead of a video, yeah2) fully okay, i see a message that i successfully blocked the ad. its quite polite, maybe i even consider unblocking. but i do not, because i have policy to decide what i buy on facts, not on ads.3) hrhr, no problem thanks to noscript.noscript even allows scripts from the page itself, only thirdparty scripts are blocked. when i temp-allow all, the page-content vanishes. but with the default i can read the page, no problem at all.Maybe its even a bu

??? They do present the choice to the user.Options->Privacy (where you would expect privacy stuff to be)And it is at the very top of the tab. A big checkbox.Tracking:"Tell websites I do not want to be tracked"

Presenting a choice to the user is not the same as providing a choice to the user.

Presenting would imply that you see a dialog box at launch asking you to decide what you want, they show you, they present you, and they don't just stash it away in a preference window without even telling you it is now there. Sure, its not hard to find, but how is the (common) user supposed to know what new options made it into their browser since they first installed it, or even at the

if they gave a shit at first run they'd ask "here is the choice, do you want tracking or no tracking?" and that would be the end of that but THEY DON'T and instead hide it somewhere in the options where the average user will be afraid to go for fear of "messing something up" so...yeah its bullshit, they cashed the checked so their ass is owned.

You could argue this for every new config option added. While I wouldn't mind it (having a 'make oldconfig' style review of new options), the notion is somewhat on the insane side.If a user cares about this, they will find it, if only by asking someone, or searching on the web.

No you couldn't argue it for every new config option because not every new config option is about user privacy, nor has every other config option been at the centre of a controversy about whether Mozilla is putting their paymasters wishes over their userbase backed up by a statement full of logical fallacies released by Mozilla on the issue.

I'd say those points make this situation rather stand out such that the point is if Mozilla were genuine about user choice on the issue of privacy they'd have made an ex

If they really felt it was a hot political topic*, they'd not have it discovered by happenstance or independently-researching users, but by informed users. During installation (be it the patch introducing it or original install of browser) they'd have a page explaining tracking in an unbiased manner then present the options. Seeing as they don't, the resultant statistics are meaningless-an added hurdle to filter and skew results. Comes off more as an attempt to appease their customers while not

The average Joe Six-pack has no idea that he's being tracked. Furthermore, average Joe Six-pack has no idea how use browser outside of typing in a URL and doing some clicking. I can see someone making the argument that Joe Six-pack probably won't install Firefox because, hell, does he even know what Firefox is?

Most people install Firefox because they hate Internet Explorer, presumably because they know Firefox to be more secure that the default br

I think the problem with setting it by default will killed it from the start, all corporation tracking users would have ignored it becasue it would have killed all their advantage. At least this way they accept to honor it because they know not everyone will know about it, it is an acceptable compromise, now our work is to teach more people about it

Do Not Track is intended to express an individual's choice, or preference, to not be tracked. It's important that the signal represents a choice made by the person behind the keyboard and not the software maker, because ultimately it's not Firefox being tracked, it's the user.

If this was even remotely true, the right approach would be to ask the user, no defaults, force a choice, simple question: Do you want to enable "Do Not Track"?

Yes and No with no button mapped to Esc or Enter/Return. Force a mouse click on the desired option.

If a browser has never asked this question, it should, upon the next update that enables the question to be asked, ask the question.

Adding a "Do not Track" option is an extremely important feature addition, but no one is going to go hunting down for it,

Yes and No with no button mapped to Esc or Enter/Return. Force a mouse click on the desired option.

And the first time it popped up, I'd be pissed and quit using the program simply because it is not allowing me to defer the decision until later. It would make far more sense to ensure that the Do Not Tack option is in the 1st Tools Menu Layer instead of the Options. This puts it in a prominent position where it will be seen by anyone who decides to examine the various options and tools provided. In regards to this being a mandantory choice durring installation, I do agree. Force the user to make a decisio

Frankly, it becomes meaningless if we enable it by default for all our users.

It becomes meaningless to whom? What Mozilla and Google and all these other ad-based/free-lunch services know, but hope users don't, is that this tracking data is the goose that lays their golden eggs. Turning on the "do not track" by default would kill that goose - because virtually nobody in their right mind would ever go in and say, "Wait, no, I WANT to be tracked by Google! That's awesome having a billion dollar conglomerate

I'd prefer not to be cynical about a group like Mozilla, but that's blatant deceit. The default is what happens before a choice is made, so there is one unless you are physically restrained from using the browser until you make a choice.

The actual answer is that nobody knows what would happen to advertising, which like it or not is the underpinning of the web, if DNT was enabled for everyone. But you can't say that for two reasons.1) It makes Mozilla look like a total sellout2) If normal people actually u

Let's be clear: ADVERTISING -- not tracking -- is the underpinning of the web. Much like ads in the newspaper, it paid for the content you are reading, but newspapers don't track me. (Aside: Maybe this is why newspapers are slowly dying. I don't know. But I do know is that this is one area that newspapers has over websites.)

Personalized ads is a specialty. Is it required? No. Sure, it helps your bottom line, but ultimately, you can get by without it.

I agree he should have used stalking which is a better analogy. if I followed you all over town, writing down all that you did, and even trying to look at what you are buying in the stores i'd be busted for stalking and rightly so. So what makes it okay because the words "On the Internet" are added? Because its some fortune 50 company? does that make it okay?

In the end the whole thing is bullshit. if Moz or anybody else at first run explained what the choice was and let the user choose? then THAT is the u

"As Do Not Track picks up steam and standardization is well underway in the W3C, people have begun asking, âoeIf Do Not Track is so good for the web, why donâ(TM)t you turn it on by default?â

Frankly, it becomes meaningless if we enable it by default for all our users. Do Not Track is intended to express an individualâ(TM)s choice, or preference, to not be tracked. Itâ(TM)s important that the signal represents a choice made by the person behind the keyboard and not the software maker, because ultimately itâ(TM)s not Firefox being tracked, itâ(TM)s the user.

Mozillaâ(TM)s mission is to give users this choice and control over their browsing experience. We wonâ(TM)t turn on Do Not Track by default because then it would be Mozilla making the choice, not the individual. Since this is a choice for the user to make, we cannot send the signal automatically but will empower them with the tools they need to do it.

Do Not Track is not Mozillaâ(TM)s position on tracking, itâ(TM)s the individualâ(TM)s â" and thatâ(TM)s what makes it great! For that reason we have no plans to turn on Do Not Track by default."

Clearly GP, and at least 4 moderators disagree. I do, too. Just because the Firefox team says it is so, does not make it so.

I find it a little sad that you criticise the GP for being modded insightful then go on to post what you did which makes absolutely no sense.

Mozilla in the content you've posted claims not to take a position on Do Not Track, and they claim it's the users choice. By determining that the default state is that users do not want to be tracked however they've already explicitly made a choice for the user, they've decided that any user who is not aware of the option wants to be tracked, which is false - I can say

If you do not check off "Do Not Track" no header is sent.If a browser always sent "Do Not Track" without the user indicating that was what they want, that would be no different than the browsersending a header saying "Hi! I'm a browser! Herp Derp"

For the header to have *any* meaning at all you have to *choose* to send it.That way you tell the site. Hey site! This is me, that person you're tracking. I don't want you to do it!

It boggles my mind how hard it is for people to grasp this simple concept.

This is still completely false, you're now desperately trying to jump to a technical argument to defend what is a social issue.

The fact is if you go out into the street the vast majority of people would far and away say they wanted their privacy protected and do not want to be tracked. By defaulting to on Mozilla isn't making the option pointless - they're making the option reflect what people actually want.

If 100% of people access a site with do not track turned on, it doesn't mean the option is invalidly

You still don't get it.If in fact 100% of people don't want to be tracked then... NO HEADER IS NECESSARY it can simply be assumed.

I think you are wrong BTW, informal polling of friends and family who I pointed out the config option - most of them did *not* enable it and seemed apathetic of tracking. You could also consider the enormous number of people using Chrome as a vote for being tracked everywhere, since every keystroke in the URL bar is sent to Google by default, and there is no DNT option in config

It should be ticked on by default. Most people out there really don't care about being tracked. Tracking is extremely valuable to the market in terms ad conversion and sales. This allows businesses to stay in business and employ people. There are few people out there who really care at all about the fact that they are being tracked, and those people generally know how to find the privacy settings in a browser. No one is going to actively seek out a setting to allow websites to track them because if they don

On Firefox, the "Tell websites I do not want to be tracked" is not enabled by default. I don't understand why this is not the default action.

The option should be "Tell websites I'm okay with being tracked" and should be ticked off by default.

Actually, it is unclear what the "do not track" actually means. Does in include "do not log" - or "wipe my IP address from the logs after x days"?

Anybody, who does want to not support the biggest trackers (facebook, google, twitter), should (a) deactivate sending cookies to third parties and (b) install ghostery in FireFox. That's much more effective than the "do not track" additional information sent to the tracking web sites.

I'm going to still use client side aggressive tactics to force them to do "no tracking" or at least make it hard for them. Sorry, but I don't trust them and all it takes is one scumbag company (doubleclick) to act as a harvester that everyone else uses.

I very much agree with this. I've disabled 3rd party cookies, delete all cookies after I shut down the browser (which I do frequently), and I have flashblock. I haven't gone so far as to use no-script, but that's another option for people who want to be tracked even less. Sure Google and other big sites can start adhering to the do-not-track stuff, but it's the smaller guys that worry me a lot more than Google.

You are aware that internet handles are not universally unique. Even things get are spelled wrong aren't unique. Because given length limitations, most people will probably drop the same letters. Also, None of those people are me. Actually, I'm pretty sure I only use this handle on Slashdot. I may have used it on other sites in the past, but don't use it anywhere now.

As that WSJ and other articles are pointing out, the "Internet Giants" will *not* be honoring the No in No Tracking. They've supposedly agreed to curtail only some specific narrow practices. They will continue a wide range of practices which are fundamentally inconsistent with the concept of No Tracking.
Aggressive client side tactics are the only way to go. However, lets not forget that the "Internet Giants" want to lock us into cloud/SaaS models and control what our client platforms can and cannot do.

I really doubt the efficacy of this privilege when it's currently completely optional and advertising companies, by their definition, rely on less privacy to make a profit.

Until the do-not-track feature becomes a law (which I hope it does, though I'm sure these companies will find ways around it), there should be more education about NoScript and other such alternatives to those who really care about controlling their privacy and exposure.

No script works better, but both together will work best. There are ways to track a user that get around no script completely, if the power players start honoring do not track that will be one less way for your privacy to be invaded.

All this governance of one's users is a hassle. Why not simply pull a Mailinator and not pay attention?
"We'd like to have all records pertaining to your users browsing for Widgets"
"Bah! We don't keep those records and don't care about them. Pay us to implement it if you want it that bad."

Can anybody name a single good thing that came out of all this enormous data collection effort? What is better for the consumer today than it was twenty years ago when there was no internet and no tracking?

You must have a short memory. Before the free internet sites we had free BBSs who worked just fine without any need to collect terabytes of data on usage. And before that we had free newspapers and newsletters. So no, tracking and ads are not required for free content to exist.

Can anybody name a single good thing that came out of all this enormous data collection effort? What is better for the consumer today than it was twenty years ago when there was no internet and no tracking?

Can anybody name a single good thing that came out of all this enormous data collection effort? What is better for the consumer today than it was twenty years ago when there was no internet and no tracking?

The problem here is that you see yourself as the consumer. For a great deal of sites where the money is made on the internet, you are not the consumer, you're the product.

The new do-not-track button isn't going to stop all Web tracking. The companies have agreed to stop using the data about people's Web browsing habits to customize ads, and have agreed not to use the data for employment, credit, health-care or insurance purposes.

As it's not belonging to "web companies" (Microsoft, Apple, Google) its "anonymous navigation" is likely to actually do the expected/claimed work.And possibly stop surfing while logged into your 10+ websites. If you are logged out, there's much less information about you thay can track!

As has been pointed out many, many times: Google pays Mozilla's bills. That's why it's so unnecessarily hard to change the default search engine and why new search engines have to be added by special plugins instead of configured manually.

I will give you that Firefox is open-source, but then again, so is Chrome...and it tracks the shit out of you whether you like it or not.

I don't understand why the editors even post such crap. The comments are supposed to be stupid here, not the articles themselves!

Do Not Track was a feature *introduced in Firefox and promoted by Mozilla*. Every browser ended up implementing it, and last of all Chrome did so grudgingly, mostly because Google didn't want to be the only one not to have it. Whether it's effective or not I'll leave up to debate - I prefer to use Ghostery myself and not rely on sites to cooperate. Call me cynical.

The second paragraph of the article is entirely a troll: the "have-you-stopped-beating-your-wife type questions that has no good answer" turns out to *have* an answer, it just didn't fit the viewpoint of the poster, who doesn't want to acknowledge that.